Perhaps we can give better help if you'll give us some more information. Which version of perl: ActiveState, Strawberry, other?</fingers-faster-than-brain>? Which vers of Net::Ping? Do you have a server active at the IP shown? Anything else that might contribute to your problem?

I can't get any version of W32 I have avail (W2k w/5.10.1; vista w/5.8.n) to reproduce the message you're showing us. And what you're showing (as perhaps you know) would produce no output other than an error or warning.

Changing the IP to one of mine and adding (along with use warnings) the following (directly from the synopsis):

print "$host is alive.\n" if $p->ping($host);
$p->close();
[download]

returns the expected result: namely that (my IP) is alive. Simply trying to print $p indicates that $p is (again, as expected) a reference to a hash:

$p: Net::Ping=HASH(0x15d5020)

And just in case the reference the "the synopsis" is a mystery, try:

perldoc Net::ping

hth ... to some small degree